shorebirds

Go to Introduction of Arctic Shorebirds 2000-2003 Below are links to the blogs posted while we conducted fieldwork in 2000 to 2003 2000 June 28 June 30 July 1 July 3 July 4 July 6 July 8 July 10 July 12 Conclusion 2001 June 27 June 30 July 3 July 6 July 9 July 13 July 15 2002 June 18 June 21 June 25 June 30 July 2 July 4 2003 Red Knot Field Journals June 21 June 23 June 26 June 28 July 4 July 6 July 8 Red Knot/Brant Aerial Surveys June 29 June 30 July 1 July…

Hope For More Tucked away among some long forgotten and useless legal papers, I found a newspaper clipping from July 13, 1988, on NJ’s Bald Eagle restoration program. The uncredited article for the Beacon, a defunct local paper serving Cape May County, described our efforts to bring Bald Eagles back to the Delaware Bay. As a young wildlife biologist for the Endangered Species Program, (and still sporting a full head of hair), I piloted this effort. It was a grim time for Eagles then. After decades of decline, the estimated original population of nearly 30 pairs, plummeted to just one…

I am reviewing a new paper by Sjoerd Duijns, a student working on the benefits of being a fat shorebird. Still, a draft, the paper analyses data from radio-tagged red knots leaving the bay in good condition (ie fat)and finds they may leave later from Delaware Bay than lighter birds but arrive earlier in the breeding grounds because they can pick the best time to leave. They are also more likely to breed successfully and survive the Arctic breeding season to the following fall. In other words being a fat knot on Delaware Bay makes life good. So in light…

Previous Post Our latest catch of red knots and ruddy turnstones two days ago ( May 27) suggests 2017 to be one of the most challenging years of our 20 years of work on Delaware Bay. It challenged the birds for certain. For example, as of two days, ago ( May 27th) average weights of red knots remain mired in the mid 160’s when it should be in the 180-gram range. This seems a minor difference but to red knots, it means a flight through the cold and often inhospitable north country of Canada and dropping out of the…

A Monumental Work of Conservation This year marks the 21st year of the Delaware Bay Shorebird Project. As one of the longest running shorebird conservation projects in the world, the only one of its kind in the US, we wanted to memorialize this monumental work. To do so we convened a daylong series of presentations by scientists and managers from all over the world who have worked on the bay. Here are the abstracts. They are worth a look by nearly anyone interested in shorebirds and Delaware Bay. DelawareBay_Workshop_Program&Abstract_CWF The presentations ranged widely. We heard talks diving deep into the…

Previous Post The capture of Arctic nesting shorebirds first brought us to Brazil in 2013. We also brought 125 geolocators and caught both ruddy turnstones and red knots, attaching 85 on the former and 30 on the latter. But we also came to create a new perspective on shorebirds in this place, one of the most important shorebird habitats in the world. For all intents and purposes, shorebird work in this area started In the mid-1980’s, when Canadian biologists, Guy Morrison and Ken Ross surveyed from an airplane, the entire coast of South America. In this monumental and dangerous survey,…

Previous Post Over the last few days of our expedition, we left the state of Para and flew to Sao Luis in the adjacent state of Maranhao. There we begin the next phase of our work, trapping red knots, ruddy turnstones and other species, as we have done since 2014. Traditional Communities Have Rights But prior to leaving Para, while we stayed in the village of Apiu Salvatore, the fishermen asked to meet with Max. He hadn’t planned it, so at first, the reason was unknown. The fishermen of the village knew Max represented ICMBio, and that Apiu Salvatore…

Previous Post Tough Conditions for Scientific Investigation It’s hard to imagine the difficulties of people living at latitude 37 degrees north when coming to the equator in northern Brazil. It challenges even the best-prepared field investigations. But after three days our team has not only acclimated but accomplished surveys in two separate estuaries. The tide cut short our first day in the field. High tide persisted longer than we expected and our survey must take place when birds forage. Shorebirds typically forage until 1 to 2 after before high tide and start again 1-2 hours after, usually…

We leave a cold and dark NJ with mix feelings for our destination tropical Brazil. It will be warm and sunnyish – forecasts predict drenching thunderstorms threatening us every day of our trip. We will explore a very new place, the ocean coast of Para, a largely unsurveyed coast known to be a wintering shorebird mecca. At the same time, we will undergo trials experienced by few biologists. Zeke is prevalent in Para, but recent cases of malaria are equally alarming. Of course one must be ever vigilant for food and water pathogens. Last year I developed food poisoning ending…

Previous Post On our final effort to trap shorebirds on Delaware Bay, we had the remarkable opportunity to watch sanderling and ruddy turnstones lift off for the Arctic. We first saw them feeding on the wave-tossed shoreline within the protected area in Villas; 1500 birds weaving as a single thread 5 deep with the contours of the wave, acting like a flying flock on the ground. Then a disturbance, a crow flying low down the shoreline and 2000 birds fill the sky. Most settled again but one group of about 300 flew more with greater determination than the rest. Still…

Previous Post We conducted our first bay wide count of shorebirds on Delaware Bay and the results suggest we are rapidly approaching the peak number of shorebirds. Last year we counted 24,700 knots and 16,000 ruddy turnstones. This year’s counts are lower because it’s early, but still over 20,000 knots and 16,000 turnstones, 10,000 sanderling have stopped over in the bay. These promising results are preliminary, but it seems we are getting close to our peak population of red knots and at the peak of the other two species – if populations are similar to last year. Bird condition also…

The Early News is Good Our team trapped over 500 shorebirds over the weekend including several hundred red knots in two catches on May 12th and 14th. Most of the caught birds, knots, ruddy turnstones and sanderlings arrived in good condition, always a relief at this early stage in the season . Ruddy turnstones arrived in better-than-average condition, weighing in at 5 grams higher than normal arrival weights. The condition on arrival is one of the main bits of information of this work. In some years, knots struggled to get to the bay coming in at…

Previous Post All our efforts to help shorebirds on Delaware Bay this year couldn’t have been better rewarded – nearly every red knot left the bay in good condition and in one of the earliest departures in the 19 years of the Project. We counted just over 24,000 knots in our aerial count of the entire Bayshore on May 26th. Just two days later, most had left and we could find only a few hundred, feeding on eggs like human shoppers feed on bargains at a half-price sale. By May 31st, virtually all were gone, along with the ruddy turnstones,…

Previous Post Clive Minton is fond of saying, “the knots vote with their wings” as a way of saying knots concentrate in the best places for knots. Of course it’s true, animals move to the habitats they find most suitable, nature leaves little room for anything but. Sometimes however, animals use a habitat only because they have little choice — in other words, they are making the best of a bad situation. The job of a good wildlife biologist is to understand the difference. Unfortunately, it’s often not obvious. In all the places studied by this author — Tierra del…

Previous Post Despite the threatening forecast of a cold drizzle and strong winds, our team persevered to complete the first bay-wide count of this season. On the New Jersey side of Delaware Bay, we counted 19,077 red knots – the most seen in the state in a decade. With Delaware’s shorebird team recording 2,000 knots along their entire shoreline, the total knot count of 21,077 is not far from the 24,000 seasonal maximum of the last three years. This is good news in either of two completely different ways. One explanation is that perhaps most of the knots have already…

About Rube With A View

The blog speaks to all people who love wildlife and wildland and always seeks to remain free of partisan bias. It explores the vital connection between good conservation and the welfare of the people living in our natural landscapes and how all can join in solving the growing problem of our rapidly changing climate.